These happenings couldn't dissipate
Love wasn't water
It could not evapourate, become another form
It just was
Terrors arose from our fingertips,
Storms in closed palms
Shifting diamonds, flightless constructs
Every sun we saw screamed of destinies awaiting
Oh, there are no parallels- only jagged almosts

-c.j.

Alas, the infamous ritardando
Where the outrageous and the mild concur
Brittle as the music was, each pulse sang with bliss
As quiet operas performed in our rebellious, shut mouths
Slow love beats with broken chords
and we partake shamelessly
We dance until we confuse stars
with lights on the low ceiling
We can kiss to the sound of cassette tapes rewinding
There is music even in our silence

-c.j.

She wanted to feel her heart cut out,
and raw, again
Verse after verse, drug after drug
He is subtle about the terrible
aftermath he inevitably brings
And her eyes spoke tales of nothing
chivalrous, only lust and the smell of skin
Only, "protect me from inevitable division"

-c.j.

Brushing up against me, except
a caress isn't as welcome as a whisper

Dragging prehistoric pills into my nose
with the pull of memories that
prefer to stay whispers

It's these desensitised nights
that remind me of what was
once so loud

And loud is quiet to me what is inaudible
to others under yellow spectrum
of silver-gloss, enough in god and
without loss

I swallow the capsule and taste the
nothingness and shake my head to
hear ringing and see other, rarer
colours- ones your eyes could hint at

And to be an ultra-deterrent that
kills without touching the lives it is
bluffing, I cannot suture the fracture
in my future
to be god, no

To be semi-real, perhaps
I am not as prolific as
I pretend to be
Each facet is another winter day
I wish wasn't sunny and mocking me

To be what you define reality,
you are a part of me
And a part of yourself is what
you have let me define
My harbouring hunger havocs soft

And if what I inhale makes me
become transparent, will you still
see me?
What's real isn't what I can reveal,
my dear

Isn't it broken, the alignment in our stars
To shift the glow, evermore
I determine the order
You determine me

Isn't it irreparable, the crackling phenomenon
existing between our gazes
We both know it is, and we love to
fall victim to it,
gracefully or not

-c.j. and Joshua Haines

When it comes to mistakes, I am fluent
I wanted you to plunge a knife into my chest
while kissing my lips with such fervour
I couldn't divide time from space

And envy crept in, by no surprise, taking its time
Eating everything worth smiling for
With the pillows as isles, my hands disrupted
their place in their floating between us

There I was, jumping to conclusions like
the edges don't exist
It hurts still to see it-
The sun swallowed the night in one gulp,
And I was jealous

-c.j.

Where bodies meet, there is deceit
This insomniac rhythm has got us
between stark white and oblivion
A pillow to lay your head,
my dear cuckoo friend

-c.j.

The rich fled from their churches,
their faces flushed
The poor remained in the parks
with the birds squawking at their feet

Blood, fabric, hymns- clashes of humanity with art
When asked about the past, the bravest would utter,
Holy water couldn't save me, all the priests saw me in the flood

So the wind prompted,
Whisper to the deities of troubles, the paradises, the wars;
hear them shiver

When the authorities passed by
the laity revealed,
They told us to confess that we were wicked in nature, sinners from birth but we always liked the thought of innate good

-c.j.